Gold, Fire, and Freedom: Inside YSL’s New LIBRE Era

When YSL Beauty launched LIBRE in 2019, the house didn’t just release a fragrance—it issued a manifesto. A bottle of unapologetic dualities (pun intended), LIBRE fused masculine-coded lavender with the radiant sensuality of orange blossom, creating an olfactory tug-of-war that somehow felt like balance. It was more than a scent; it was a declaration that freedom belongs to women who refuse to choose between strength and softness, between power and vulnerability. Six years later, that flame hasn’t dimmed. In fact, it’s been reignited—this time with a molten, golden edge.

Enter LIBRE Vanille Couture, YSL Beauty’s limited-edition drop for 2025. Think of it as LIBRE dressed in liquid gold: intoxicating, more lavish, and dripping with excess in all the right ways. It’s an homage to the eternal lure of gold, a material Monsieur Saint Laurent himself once described as “the colour of the sun, a magical colour.” With this iteration, YSL takes a house icon and dials up the decadence. The result is a scent that’s radiant yet defiant, couture yet reckless—a fragrance that dares you to burn brighter.

The Campaign: Dua Lipa Sets the World on Fire

No YSL fragrance is ever just about what’s in the bottle. It’s about the story, the image, the vibe. For LIBRE, that narrative has always been embodied by its global ambassador, Dua Lipa—a woman who walks into a room and shifts its gravitational pull.

The new campaign, shot by Spanish filmmaker Diana Kunst, is more than a glossy perfume ad; it’s a meditation on freedom itself. Filmed between the raw vastness of Chile’s Atacama Desert and the pulsing chaos of the city, the campaign juxtaposes wild openness with urban edge. We see Dua in a YSL tuxedo devouring a slice of pizza, or dancing on a bar before smashing a glass with her stiletto. She sprawls across a bench, boyish and unbothered, before screaming into the wind atop a mountain. Couture collides with chaos, sophistication with raw energy.

And then comes the climax: Dua Lipa, fearless on a rooftop, ignites the LIBRE sign in flames. Bathed in golden firelight, she becomes the ultimate symbol of the LIBRE woman—reckless, radiant, and utterly uncontainable.

The soundtrack? Her searing cover of Aretha Franklin’s “Think,” a feminist anthem that feels less like background music and more like a rallying cry. With this, LIBRE doesn’t just sell perfume—it sells a state of mind.

The Fragrance: When Vanilla Goes Couture

So, what’s actually in this golden elixir? Master perfumers Anne Flipo and Carlos Benaïm—architects of the original LIBRE—return with a creation that turns vanilla into something rare, tactile, and couture.

At its heart lies the Vanilla Caviar Accord, made from Bourbon vanilla pods hand-harvested in Madagascar’s Sava region. These aren’t your everyday dessert-aisle vanilla beans. Blanched, dried, and cut with precision, the pods are treated with supercritical CO₂ extraction, yielding a concentrated essence that captures the pod’s most luxurious qualities. Flipo describes it as “a true perfumer’s vanilla—dense, precious, and far from gourmand clichés.”

But vanilla alone doesn’t make this scent couture. Enter rum absolute, spiked with cinnamon—a golden liqueur that brings warmth, burn, and a whisper of danger. Swirled into the creamy vanilla, it transforms sweetness into sensual intoxication. The tension is further amplified by YSL’s bespoke orange blossom accord from Morocco’s Ourika Gardens—bright, solar, and luminous—set against sharp lavender from Provence. The result is a fragrance that feels like draping yourself in molten gold: radiant, addictive, and commanding.

The Bottle: Gold as an Attitude

YSL has never treated bottles as afterthoughts. They’re design objects—couture pieces in their own right. LIBRE Vanille Couture takes Suzanne Dalton’s now-iconic LIBRE silhouette and drenches it in textural, metallic gold. It’s glossy, decadent, almost armor-like.

Clear glass panels reveal the golden liquid within, while a precision-cut glass V—like a plunging neckline—slices down the front. The slanted black cap and gold chain detail are still there, echoing the asymmetric tailoring of a Saint Laurent tuxedo. The whole thing is bold, sleek, and a little dangerous. In short: it looks like it could double as a weapon in the clutch of a femme fatale.

The Philosophy: Freedom as State of Being

More than just a scent, LIBRE Vanille Couture continues YSL’s ongoing exploration of freedom. It’s not about grand, cinematic gestures (though Dua setting fire to a rooftop certainly qualifies). It’s about the smaller, unexpected acts that define independence: eating pizza in couture, breaking glass just because, or screaming into the void because you feel like it.

Director Diana Kunst puts it best: “Radical acts of freedom can be finding inspiration on a street corner, but it’s also following your impulses, charting your own course for fun—and because it empowers you.”

And that’s the essence of LIBRE: freedom not as rebellion for rebellion’s sake, but as a way of living without compromise. As Flipo notes, “Freedom is daring to be sensitive, daring to be bold when it feels right, and trusting your emotional intuition.”

Why It Matters

In a world where fragrances often get lost in a sea of sameness, LIBRE has always stood apart. Its structure—bridging masculine and feminine codes—wasn’t just olfactory innovation; it was a cultural statement. And in LIBRE Vanille Couture, YSL raises the stakes.

This isn’t vanilla as comfort food. This is vanilla as weaponized seduction. This is gold as more than a decorative flourish—it’s gold as a manifesto. It’s what happens when couture dares to be reckless, and when recklessness dares to be couture.

And maybe that’s why LIBRE has resonated so strongly for six years. It speaks to women who want it all, who embody contradictions, who live with both softness and steel. It’s not just perfume—it’s the scent of claiming space, unapologetically.

The Last Word

“Closer. Bolder. Golder.” That’s how YSL sums up the new campaign, and it feels like the perfect tagline for LIBRE Vanille Couture. This is not a quiet scent. It’s not designed to sit politely on your skin. It’s meant to radiate, to burn, to be noticed.

As Yves himself once said: “I love gold. It’s a magical colour; it’s the colour of the sun.” With LIBRE Vanille Couture, YSL doesn’t just bottle a fragrance—it bottles sunlight set aflame. A scent for women who don’t ask for permission, who don’t tone themselves down, who know that freedom isn’t just something you claim—it’s something you live, moment by molten moment.

And that, in true YSL fashion, is the ultimate luxury.